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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.